New Zealand Gold Prospecting & Metal Detecting Forums Archive

The trommel used to sit in its own pond and has been flushed out during flood and now embedded in gravel, I would say it is a bit far gone :( pics from inside the Ophir jail. Also pic down a tunnel at Hyde showing the quartz conglomerate and the hard iron pan layer above my gumboot.

Edited by user Tuesday, 5 March 2013 3:31:58 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Photos of restored buildings at the Chinese camp Arrowtown. 2-3mm Au in Arsenopyrite and Quartz, found as floaters in a small creek near the Nenthorn gold field.

Thanks for the quality pics.

That's interesting 2 different deposits.thanks for the pic,s

went to the new settlers museum, the gold display is lacking considerably, there some good photos of old Dunedin though and some other childhood memories, the gold display consists of a couple of grams of rough wee nuggets from Gabriel's gully.....and I think I spotted a picture or two, not a gold pan in sight, the stage coach has a $50,000 sculpture attached to it. There was no mention of my great Aunt who served on the board for over thirty years, and the portrait of great great grandfather Robert has moved out of the gallery into nothingness......all I could find was the listing in the arrivals......one wonders if great Aunt ruffled a few feathers ;)

Edited by user Tuesday, 29 October 2013 3:22:17 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

To ease the Gold fever, winter usually sees me delving into books and researching old newspaper articles, pouring over maps and dreaming. This winter I have followed up on historical reports of gold along the east coast of the south island. A fellow digger and I have given the beaches a rough test and found good prospects where small creek flow out onto the beaches. We first trialled using a highbanker with astro turf carpet, this was very inefficient, so the next mission we used a single length of guttering and rubber matting, this improved the recovery but going was slow, so for the next trip the amount of guttering was doubled, but we had problems with stones. Yesterday at lunchtime we took the highbanker and the guttering, problem solved. From about mid day until 2am today we dug and dug, got a bonfire going, had the full moon to light everything up, enjoyed the company of the locals, felt an earthquake while sitting on the sand dunes,and saw a dolphin swimming behind the breakers. The digging is easy but when you are getting good concentrations of the Garnet and Black sands, can be pretty heavy.

He he, yea we left you a wee patch ;) Not a huge amount of magnetic black sand but the percentage surprised me a little. I test panned the bottom of the gravel layer that sits on top of the mudstone exposed in the bank and it had the same ratio of gold as the surface layers of the beach sand, the concentrates contained black sand but no obvious garnet so I wonder where the garnet is coming from? On the geo map the grav is classed as a post glacial out wash. Cartoon cat is quite practical when it comes to making gear, the highbanker is a sluice box modified with an oven warming draw tray, mounted on a sack barrow, water is supplied by a small bilge pump, connected to a car battery that has two solar panels charging it during the day, when it gets dark there is a small drop in pressure, but the battery runs the pump for ages, has not gone flat on us yet.

Edited by user Tuesday, 23 July 2013 2:48:35 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified

Some scenic pics of a late summer mission over the Dunstan Road to Galloway

some more.....

Have not put up many pics of AU for a while, here is some :) mostly panned from all around Otago.

Edited by user Friday, 7 March 2014 5:21:18 PM(UTC)  | Reason: Not specified